2022-2023 L'IMAGE comics
To cite this page: Taniguchi, Ai, and Haili Su. 2023. Ido's Story - Hebrew. In University of Toronto Language, Identity, Multiculturalism and Global Empowerment Project (L'IMAGE). Available online at https://linguistait.wixsite.com/limage1/ido-hebrew. Accessed on [date].
Ido's story - Hebrew
L’IMAGE comic series: Ido’s Story
Alt-Text with long description
COMIC
[Page 1, Title Page]
Upper left corner of page reads: UofT L’IMAGE Project: Language, Identity, Multiculturalism and Global Empowerment
Subtitle over light blue box: The lived experiences of real multilingual students at U of T
Title over bright red box: Ido’s story**
Under the title banners, the character Ido smiles at the readers. Ido has light skin, short dirty blonde hair, and dark eyes. He is wearing a navy blue hoodie.
Bottom left corner of page shows the University of Toronto logo.
Bottom right footnote: **Some stories in the L’IMAGE comic series employ pseudonyms at the request of the featured student.
[Long description of text and images in the comic strip:
The comic strips in the L’IMAGE comic series uses the font Ames, which is the standard font for comics. Ames is an all-caps font. However, Alt-Texts for this project are not written in all-caps so that they will be more accessible for screen readers.
The comic artist for the series is Dr. Ai Taniguchi. Her drawing style can be described as: Japanese manga inspired, cute, large eyes, intentionally sketchy and unpolished line art, simplified, expressive. The comic strips are all digital, but she uses a pen that mimics the line weight of a traditional fountain pen. Her line art is on average 0.5mm in width (relatively thin), but the line weight varies and looks hand-drawn.
The title page of each comic strip is in color. It has a University of Toronto color scheme: navy blue, light blue, and bright red. The background is white with a navy blue frame. The references and acknowledgements page and the “About the L’IMAGE project” page also have this University of Toronto color scheme.
The comic strips themselves are black and white, and employ digital screen tones for shading and backgrounds. Narrations are written inside rectangular boxes, unless otherwise noted.]
[Page 2]
Top panel: Ido is smiling with his eyes squinted and mouth open as if saying something, and waving with his left hand. There are decorative triangular flags hanging from the top in the background.
Ido’s narration: Hi! My name is Ido. I’m a student at UTM. I speak Hebrew and English!
Bottom panel: We see the flag of Israel to the left, and the flag of Canada to the right. We see a profile view of young Ido between the flags, walking towards the Canadian flag and pulling a suitcase. He is holding a cupcake with a single candle on it, and wearing a cone-shaped party hat.
Ido’s narration: I was born in Israel, and I moved to Canada with my family on my 12th birthday.
[Page 3]
Top panel 1: A spotlight is on Ido, and he is making a comically awkward and slightly strained face, as if he is doing something that takes a lot of mental effort. Hand-written text above him depicting his speech reads, “railroad” in all caps. The letter R is bolded in the word.
Ido’s narration: One thing about Canadian Englisht aht is a bit tricky for me is the “R” sound.
Top panel 2: Ido has his left hand over his throad, and is saying “Resh (ר , Hebrew symbol for Resh)” via a speech bubble. Hand-written text depicting his speech reads, “Your tongue is kind of pushed to the back-ish?”.
Ido’s narration: It’s really different from Hebrew!
Bottom panel 1: Ido to the left, and another character with light-colored bob-length hair and light skin to the right. Ido is silently listening to them say, “Wow, what kind of accent is that?!”.
Ido’s narration: In Canada, sometimes I get the impression that people really aren’t familiar with Hebrew.
Bottom panel 2: Ido is seen saying, “What do you think”?.
Ido’s narration: I’ve asked people to guess what my first language is based on my accent in English. I’ve gotten some pretty interesting guesses, like…
[Page 4]
Top panel 1: The character from the previous page saying, “French?” with a smile.
Top panel 2: A different character with short dark hair and light skin saying, “German?” with a neutral expression.
Top panel 3: A different character with dark buzz cut hair and darker skin saying, “Russian?” with eyes slightly squinted and one eyebrow raised.
Bottom panel: A spotlight is on Ido and yet another character, who has short, dark, side-part hair with side swept bangs and light skin. They are pointing to Ido with their right hand, with their index finger and thumb extended, and making a comical “ah-ha” expression with a hint of misguided confidence.
Ido’s narration: I think the wildest one was…
The other character’s speech bubble: Irish??
[Page 5]
Top panel: A shaded background with what appears to be ancient Hebrew script.
Ido’s narration: Hebrew has a really long history! Biblical Hebrew, which is the ancestor of Modern Hebrew, was attested as early as the 10th Century BCE!
Bottom panel: A spotlight is on a profile view of a Jewish rabbi reading a book (probably the Torah). He has light skin and a full beard, and is wearing black clothing and a black kippah (Jewish cap).
Ido’s narration: At one point in history (around 200 CE), Hebrew ceased to be a spoken language. It was used in Bible study and prayer by Jewish people, but it wasn’t used in everyday life.
[Page 6]
Top panel: A drawing of Eliezer Ben-Yehuda (1858 - 1922). He has light skin, has a beard, and his short hair is combed back. He is wearing round glasses with a chain attached to it. He is wearing a suit.
Ido’s narration: Like 2000 years after that, though, there was a movement to revive it as a spoken language. Eliezer Ben-Yehuda is often regarded as one of the earliest promoters of this movement.
Bottom panel: Ido is pointing to a drawing of an ice cream cone. Text above it reads, [Hebrew for icecream] [glida].
Ido’s narration: He invented a lot of Modern Hebrew words that didn’t exist before.
[Page 7]
Entire panel: We see what appears to be the entrance of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. We see a wall with the university name written in Hebrew and in English, with the school logo next to it. There is a stone or brick path in front of it, with grass growing between the wall and the path. We can see a fairly modern looking building that is three or four stories high behind the wall, with trees peeking out from behind the wall as well.
Ido’s narration: Ben-Yehuda was the initiator of Hebrew revitalization, but what really helped with bringing spoken Hebrew back was things like the establishment of Hebrew Schools. Today, there are more than5 million Hebrew speakers!
[Page 8]
Top panel: We see Ido to the left of the panel with a neutral expression. His gaze is towards a silhouette of a group of three people, who seem to be enjoying a conversation.
Ido’s narration: At UTM, it hasn’t been easy for me to find other Hebrew speakers. I don’t really have opportunities to use Hebrew except with my family here in Canada ---
Bottom panel: Ido with his friend, who has light skin and short dark hair that is slightly longer in the middle. The friend is holding a smartphone, and his speech bubble reads, “I מטריל sometimes”. There is an arrow pointing to the speech bubble and it reads, “ “troll” in Hebrew”. Ido is staring at this friend with a comically depicted, confused expression with his eyes wide open and eyes slightly furrowed. There is a small question mark next to him, depicting his confusion. Decorative grids fill the rest of the panel.
Ido’s narration: So sometimes when I visit Israel, I have to play catch-up and learn all the new slang words in Hebrew that my friends are using!
[Page 9]
Top panel: A simple panel with a simple screentone background.
Ido’s narration: I love learning about languages that my friends know because I feel like I get a better understanding of their identity. I hope that people take interest in Hebrew, too!
Bottom panel: Ido is smiling confidently at the readers. Sparkly pentagons in the background evoke feelings of inspiration.
Ido’s narration: My name is Ido. Calling all Hebrew speakers at U of T: let’s build a community!
[Page 10]
Page title: About the L’IMAGE project
Project PI and comic artist: Ai Taniguchi, Assistant Professor, UTM Department of Language Studies
Research Assistant: Haili Su, MA Student, UTSG Department of Linguistics
Special thanks to: Gilbert Lin, Assistant Director, Intercultural & Global Initiatives, UTM International Education Centre
With the generous support of: UofT International Student Experience Fund, UTM Department of Language Studies, UTM International Education Centre
Learn more: http://www.lingcomics.com
Bottom right of page shows the University of Toronto Mississauga logo and the University of Toronto logo.
INFOGRAPHIC
[Page 1]
Subtitle: Five-minute linguistics with L’IMAGE Aji!
Main title, over red banner: Hebrew
Hebrew is a Canaanite language belonging to the Northwest Semitic language family. The Canaanite language group includes Phoenician, Ammonite, Edomite, and Moabite — but Hebrew is the only Canaanite language that still has living speakers today. The variety of Hebrew that is spoken today is referred to as Modern Hebrew and it has a large concentration of speakers in Israel. Hebrew is probably best known worldwide as the language used in the Torah.
Hebrew has a long history! Biblical Hebrew, which was attested as early as the 10th century BCE, is Modern Hebrew’s ancestor and was spoken in ancient Israel.
Hebrew ceased to be a spoken language around 200 CE, meaning that at one point in history it was not spoken by anyone as their mother tongue. It was only used in liturgic contexts (e.g., prayer), and was not used as a spoken language in everyday conversations. Towards the end of the 19th century, there was a movement to revive the Hebrew language. Today, it is estimated that about 5 million people speak Modern Hebrew as their first language!
We see the Jewish Star of David symbol in light blue in the background.
L’IMAGE Aji is smiling in the bottom right.
[Page 2]
Subtitle: Five-minute linguistics with L’IMAGE Aji!
Main title, over red banner: Hebrew
Alt-text note: the rest of this infographic uses symbols from the International Phonetic Alphabet in some places, and Hebrew characters in some places.
Modern Hebrew uses the Hebrew alphabet for writing. All letters in the Hebrew alphabet represent consonants, but some of them can also be interpreted as vowels. See the table below for an example of this.
A table with five columns and four rows.
Row 1:
Title of Column 1: Letter.
Title of Column 2: International Phonetic Alphabet.
Title of Column 3: Example (orthography)
Title of Column 4: Example (IPA)
Title of Column 5: Meaning of Example
Row 2: ו. /v/. ו ר ד. [ˈveʁed]. ‘rose’
Row 3: ו. /o/. ט ו ב. [tov]. ‘good’.
Row 4: ו. /u/. ב ו ל. [bul]/ ‘stamp’.
When the context isn’t sufficient for identifying which vowels should be used in a word, sometimes dots and dashes (called niqqud/nikkud) are added to represent them. Niqqud is often used for unfamiliar words (e.g., words borrowed from other languages and/or invented for specific contexts) and for children and adults who are learning to read in Hebrew.
L’IMAGE Aji speech bubble: Here’s an example of niqqud!
L’IMAGE Aji is pointing to an example of a word written in Hebrew: מַסְרֵק [masˈʁek] 'comb'
[Long description of Hebrew alphabet symbols. It may be useful to know that the Hebrew alphabet is sometimes called the “square script” or the “box script”. As these names suggest, a lot of the Hebrew letters are box-like in shape. Most prototypically, the Mem letter (the Hebrew “M”) is quite literally a box, with the upper right corner slightly rounded and the other corners angular. Imagine variations of this box, subtracting various sides and various combinations of sides. Many of the other Hebrew letters look like that. For example, the letter Chet (used for the CH sound as in Bach) is the box described earlier, minus the bottom side. Some letters look more circle-like, and some have more of a U, V, or Y shape. The letter that can be pronounced as /v/, /o/, or /u/ depending on context (that was mentioned earlier) is a simple vertical line. Niqqud annotations are made as dots and horizontal dashes. Dots are typically under the letter but also sometimes above or to the letter’s left side. There could be anywhere from one to three dots. When there are two dots, they can be oriented horizontally (e.g., two next to eachother) or oriented vertically (e.g., one on top of another). The dashes are usually under the letter. It can be a singular horizontal dash, or two dashes in a T shape.]
[Page 3]
Subtitle: Five-minute linguistics with L’IMAGE Aji!
Main title, over red banner: Hebrew
Did you know that Modern Hebrew is written from right to left? For example, this is how you write tov (meaning ‘good’) in Modern Hebrew:
[Alt-text note: three Hebrew characters]
טוב
(transliteration: tov)
v = ב
o = ו
t = ט
[Alt-text note: The word written in the Latin transliteration is T-O-V. In Hebrew, the leftmost symbol represents V. The middle symbol represents O. The rightmost symbol represents T.]
L’IMAGE Aji is seen smiling in the bottom center.
[Page 4]
Subtitle: Five-minute linguistics with L’IMAGE Aji!
Main title, over red banner: Hebrew
There are two main varieties of Hebrew spoken in Israel. These two Hebrew varieties are sometimes called “Oriental” (or Mizrahi) and “non-Oriental”. The two varieties differ in the kinds of sounds they have. The Oriental/Mizrahi variety is known for having pharyngeal consonants: sounds that are produced with the back of your tongue against the pharynx.
We see L’IMAGE Aji pointing to a sagittal section diagram drawn in U of T secondary colors, primarily light teal. A sagittal section is the cross-section view of a human head: imagine the profile view of a person facing the reader’s left, and we get to see the anatomy inside their nasal, oral, and throat region. In this simplified, not fully labeled diagram, the layperson reader would probably notice things like the nostril, nasal cavity, lips, teeth, tongue inside the oral cavity, and a cylindrical-ish cavity behind the tongue that eventually leads to the lungs and the stomach (not shown).
In this particular diagram on this page, the tongue is labeled and is in a neutral position. The area right behind the back of the tongue is labeled as the pharynx. We see arrows coming from the back of the tongue and pointing towards the pharynx, indicating the tongue’s movement towards the pharynx.
[Page 5]
Subtitle: Five-minute linguistics with L’IMAGE Aji!
Main title, over red banner: Hebrew
The non-Oriental variety of Modern Hebrew does not have pharyngeal consonants, but it does have other cool sounds that Canadian English doesn’t have! For example, Modern Hebrew has a voiceless uvular fricative, /χ/ (e.g., כ in לכתוב [liχˈtov], ‘to write’). If you speak French, it’s the same sound that you hear for the "r" in the word très [tχɛ]!
The letter resh ר (the “r” of Hebrew) can be pronounced in various ways in Hebrew (especially depending on the dialect), but in Modern Hebrew it is also often a uvular consonant.
We see a sagittal section again. The tongue is still labeled and is in a neutral position. In this particular diagram, the uvula is labeled. The uvula is that dangly thing in the back of your mouth.
L’IMAGE Aji speech bubble: “Uvular” refers to the uvula!
[Page 6]
Subtitle: Five-minute linguistics with L’IMAGE Aji!
Main title, over red banner: Hebrew
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Voiceless means that your vocal cords do not vibrate when you produce this sound (e.g., /s/ as in soon, /t/ as in too are also voiceless). The opposite of voiceless is voiced: your vocal cords vibrate when you produce voiced sounds (e.g., sounds like /z/ as in zoo and /d/ as in do are voiced).
-
Uvular means that that the back of your tongue moves towards your uvula when you produce this sound.
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Fricative means that you constrict air flow when you produce this sound: you force air through a small gap. In the case of a uvular fricative, this means that there is a small gap between the back of your tongue and the uvula. When the air coming from your lungs pass through this small opening, it causes a turbulent, sort of “hissy” sound.
We see a sagittal section again to the right of the page. It explains how the voiceless uvular fricative ([χ] in the International Phonetic Alphabet) is produced.
-
The diagram shows that voiceless means that the vocal cords (or vocal folds) do not vibrate. Vocal cords are found in the cylindrical-ish cavity that leads to your lungs, in your neck region.
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The diagram shows that that when you articulate a uvular consonant, your tongue bunches up towards the back of your mouth, and moves towards the uvula.
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The diagram shows that when you produce a fricative sound, in this context a uvular fricative, there is a tiny gap between the back of your tongue and the tip of the uvula. The diagram shows that the air passage coming from your lungs escape through this tiny gap and out your mouth.
[Page 7]
Subtitle: Five-minute linguistics with L’IMAGE Aji!
Main title, over red banner: Hebrew
When it comes to forming words, Hebrew can be described as having a templatic morphology, which was also briefly mentioned in our Arabic lesson. Let’s look at some words in Modern Hebrew to review how it works. The word in Hebrew, the transliteration, the (approximate) transcription in the International Phonetic Alphabet, and the meaning are given in (1)-(6).
-
גדלתי gadalti [ga’dalti] ‘(I) grew (past, 1st person)’
-
גודל godel [go’del] ‘grow (present, masculine)’
-
גודלת godelet [go’delet] ‘grow (present, feminine)’
-
אגדל egdal [eg’dal] ‘(I) will grow (future, 1st person)’
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גידול gidul [gi’dul] ‘act of making something grow’ (or ‘tumor’)
-
גדול gadol [ga’dol] ‘big’
You’ll notice that the words in (1)-(6) have the consonants g, d, and l in common. /gdl/ is a consonantal root in Modern Hebrew that is used for words that are related to the meaning of ‘grow’. In a language with templatic morphology, you insert vowels into consonantal roots to derive words. Sometimes you add affixes (e.g., prefixes or suffixes), too.
Words that are related in meaning often share the same consonantal root, regardless of whether it’s a verb, noun, adjective, etc.! Many Semitic languages have templatic morphology.
We see three images of L’IMAGE Aji at the bottom of the page, getting progressively larger going from left to right.
[Page 8]
Subtitle: Five-minute linguistics with L’IMAGE Aji!
Main title, over red banner: Hebrew
References
Adam, G. (2002). From variable to optimal grammar: Evidence from language acquisition and language change [Doctoral dissertation, Tel-Aviv University).
Asherov, D., & Cohen, E. G. (2019). A phonetic description of Modern Hebrew consonants and vowels. Brill's Journal of Afroasiatic Languages and Linguistics, 11(1), 3-27.
Berman, R. (1978). Modern Hebrew structure. Tel Aviv. University Publishing Projects.
Chayen, M. J. (2017). The Phonetics of Modern Hebrew. De Gruyter Mouton.
Gafter, R. J. (2019). Modern Hebrew sociophonetics. Brill's Journal of Afroasiatic Languages and Linguistics, 11(1), 226-242.
Laufer, A. (1990). Hebrew. Journal of the International Phonetic Association 20(2): 40-43.
Temkin Martínez, M. (2010). Sources of non-conformity in phonology: Variation and exceptionality in Modern Hebrew spirantization [Doctoral dissertation, Boise State University].
What information was drawn from Adam and Temkin Martínez? They mostly talk about spirantization (which is not mentioned here).
Learn more
1. Brief history of Hebrew: https://www.learnreligions.com/the-hebrew-language-2076678
2. Hebrew writing system: https://mena-languages.northwestern.edu/language-learning/languages-with-different-scripts/hebrew-alphabet.html
3. Learning Hebrew: https://www.alllanguageresources.com/hebrew-podcasts
4. Hebrew linguistics, especially phonetics/phonology: See above references
5. Are you a Jewish student? Find Hillel on your campus: https://www.hillel.org/
Acknowledgement
Expert Consultant**
Daniel Asherov
PhD Candidate, Department of Linguistics and Philosophy
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
**Errors, if any, are the PI’s oversight.
[Page 9]
Subtitle: Five-minute linguistics with L’IMAGE Aji!
Main title, over red banner: Hebrew
Page title: About the L’IMAGE project
Project PI and comic artist: Ai Taniguchi, Assistant Professor, UTM Department of Language Studies
Research Assistant: Haili Su, MA Student, UTSG Department of Linguistics
Special thanks to: Gilbert Lin, Assistant Director, Intercultural & Global Initiatives, UTM International Education Centre
With the generous support of: UofT International Student Experience Fund, UTM Department of Language Studies, UTM International Education Centre
Learn more: http://www.lingcomics.com
Bottom right of page shows the University of Toronto Mississauga logo and the University of Toronto logo.